Voice Recognition Breaking News

L&H™ ANNOUNCES NEW PARTNERSHIPS IN SINGAPORE

Partners include portals, start-ups, dot.coms deploying advanced speech and language technologies to extend reach and customer value

Singapore - April 4, 2000 - Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ: LHSP; EASDAQ: LHSP) (L&H™), a worldwide leader in speech and linguistic technologies, products and services, today announced a list of new Singapore partners under its S.AI.L (Speech, Artificial Intelligence, Language) Partners program.

These new partnerships comprise companies working in areas including WAP, Unified Messaging Services, Virtual Communities and online Business-to-Business online-procurement. The new partners include; earth9.com, iDeskPte.Ltd, Mustard Technologies, and WAPworkz.

"The agreements today affirm our belief that speech and language technologies can serve as a primary interface for information retrieval, enhanced communication and value-added services. Our partners come from a wide range of areas, showing that S.AI.L technology is facing strong growth and diversification," said Kevin Lim, Vice President of Marketing and Project Management, L&H™ Asia Pacific. "L&H's ability to offer technologies in numerous platforms, and in the desired languages, continues to drive demand."

The L&H™ S.AI.L Partner program is an end-to-end partnership program aimed at helping partners bring new, robust products to market quickly and efficiently. Apart from comprehensive training and technical support from L&H's Singapore-based Customer Support Centre, it also includes joint sales and marketing efforts, and opportunities to leverage IDA Singapore's (InfoCommunications Development Authority) Local Industry Upgrading Programme (IT LIUP).

S.AI.L partners announced today were:

Earth9.com: Virtual communities portal Earth9.com will utilize L&H™ automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) technologies to speech-enable its site. Earth9.com will also use L&H's translation and localization services to reach Japanese and Chinese audiences in Hong Kong, People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Japan. The addition of speech and language technologies is expected to enable users to access earth9.com via mobile devices.
iDesk Pte. Ltd: iDesk, aims to link buyers and suppliers together - a cross between a virtual concierge and e-secretary. iDesk plans to use L&H™ TTS technology to provide an easier, more convenient interface for its customers.
Mustard Technology Pte Ltd: Mustard Technology devlopes a unique, human-like, intuitive, search engine called the Human Logic Server that allows users to search for names, terms, category and descriptive information without knowing the exact spelling, pronunciation, or hierarchy locality. Mustard and L&H™ plan to jointly develop voice-enabled directory services and search engines.
WAPworkz: This start-up aims to allow its users access to Web-sites via its WAP-enabled mobile phones. WAPworkz, which also provides applications, training and solutions, is expected to use L&H's award-winning L&H™ RealSpeak technology to extend its services to wider markets. In its demo today, WAPworkz demonstrated accessing L&H™ translation services from a mobile phone, and a student accessing a set of lecture notes from a phone.

Tang Chi Sim, Director, Technology, earth9.com said, "We are very glad to be working with L&H™ as a technology partner in the development of a voice accessible platform for earth9.com as well as the translation of earth9.com into Chinese and Japanese. This partnership will enable us to have a more rapid time-to-market, as well as allow us to offer local language web-based applications in Asia,"

Added King Lim, Technology Officer from WAPworkz, "Speech and language technologies will allow us to expand our markets, provide more services and offerings. Our goal is to use L&H™ technology to give users more ways to access the Web."

About IT LIUP

The Infocomm Technology Local Industry Upgrading Programme (ICT LIUP) aims to accelerate the development of a vibrant Infocomm Technology industry in Singapore through cultivating stronger ties and developing win-win partnerships between the local ICT companies and leading ICT multinational companies (MNCs).

About Lernout & Hauspie

Lernout & Hauspie (L&H™) is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. L&H™ is making the speech user interface (SUI) the cornerstone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. The company provides a wide range of offerings, including: customized solutions for corporations; core speech technologies marketed to OEMs; end user and retail applications for continuous speech products in horizontal and vertical markets; and document creation, human and machine translation services, Internet translation offerings, and linguistic tools. L&H™ products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech and music compression (SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit L&H™ on the World Wide Web at www.lhsl.com.

This News Release contains forward-looking information that involves risks and uncertainties, including statements about the company's plans, objectives, expectations and intentions. Such statements include, without limitation, discussions concerning the company's successful completion of the projects. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, the company's reliance on sales by its customers to generate recurring revenues, the early stage of the speech technology market, he ability of the company and its partners to develop and successfully market new products, rapid technological change and competition. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date of this News Release. The company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statement to reflect any change in the company's expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstance on which any such statement is based. All product names and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of L&H™ or their respective owners.